Celebrating the Hubble telescope: 30 years of photos from space

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first image from space on May 20, 1990. Here are some of the iconic images Hubble has sent back since.

Carina Nebula

In this image provided by NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, a stellar jet in the Carina Nebula is pictured in space.

NASA

Space shuttle Atlantis

In this tightly cropped handout image provided by NASA, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit at 10:27 a.m. EDT, May 18, 2009, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Thierry Legault/NASA

Crab Nebula

This image gives the most detailed view so far of the entire Crab Nebula ever made. The image is the largest image ever taken with Hubble's WFPC2 workhorse camera.

NASA/ESA Space Telescope

Seyfert's Sextet

This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a group of galaxies called the Seyfert's Sextet on June 26, 2000. Although the name of this grouping suggests that there are six, there are in reality only four galaxies in the group that are slowly merging into one.

NASA/Hulton Archive

Lagoon Nebula

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a pair of one-half-light-year-long interstellar "twisters," eerie funnels and twisted-rope structures, in the heart of the Lagoon Nebula, which lies 5,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. The central hot star, O Herschel 36 (lower right), is the primary source of the ionizing radiation for the brightest region in the nebula, called the Hourglass.

NASA IMAGE/AFP via Getty Images

Spiral galaxy NGC 4631

An image of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope shows a halo of hot gas surrounding spiral galaxy NGC 4631 that is similar to the Milky Way galaxy, June 19, 2001. The orange color in the middle of the image represents ultraviolet radiation as observed by UIT, tracing massive stars in the galaxy.

NASA/Getty Images

Little Ghost Nebula

The Hubble Space Telescope took this image of a dying star named "NGC 6369" on Nov. 7, 2002. The star, also known as the "Little Ghost Nebula," is 2000 to 5000 light years from Earth and is similar in mass to our sun. The ghostly halo surrounding the star is caused by the shedding of the star's outer layers during the final stages of its life cycle.

NASA/Getty Images

Cone Nebula

The Cone Nebula, an innocuous pillar of gas and dust, is seen in this picture unveiled by astronomers on April 30, 2002.

NASA/Getty Images

Nebula IC 1396

Resembling a flaming creature on the run, this image exposes the hidden interior of a dark and dusty cloud in the emission Nebula IC 1396. Young stars previously obscured by dust can be seen here for the first time.

NASA via Getty Images

Cas A supernova

An image of a Cas A supernova reveals the remnants of a section of the upper rim of the youngest known supernova identified in our Milky Way galaxy. Dozens of tiny clumps near the top of the image are actually small fragments of the star, and each clump is approximately 10 times larger than the diameter of our solar system. The varying colors of the supernova are caused by glowing atoms.

NASA/Getty Images

Kepler's supernova

This image released Oct. 7, 2004, by NASA shows Kepler's supernova remnant produced by combining data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. Kepler's supernova was first seen 400 years ago by sky watchers, including famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. The combined image unveils a bubble-shaped shroud of gas and dust that is 14 light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (2,000 kilometers per second).

NASA/AFP via Getty Images

Whirlpool Galaxy and Eagle Nebula

In this composite handout image released from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Whirlpool Galaxy and Eagle Nebula are seen April 25, 2005.

Hubble Space Telescope/NASA

Fomalhaut

In this handout provided by NASA, a visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a red ring of dust and debris that surrounds the star Fomalhaut and the newly discovered planet Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star.

NASA via Getty Images

Pluto and its moons

This undated image taken by the Hubble telescope shows Pluto and its moons Charon, Nix and Hydra. The International Astronomical Union announced on Aug. 24, 2006, that it no longer considered Pluto a planet, a status it had held since its discovery in 1930.

NASA/Getty Images

Jupiter

A curtain of glowing gas is wrapped around Jupiter's north pole like a lasso Dec. 19, 2000, in a Hubble telescope photo. The curtain of light, called an aurora, is produced when high-energy electrons race along the planet's magnetic field and into the upper atmosphere. The electrons excite atmospheric gases, causing them to glow. The aurora resembles the same phenomenon that crowns Earth's polar regions.

NASA/Hulton Archive

Radiant Star

The Radiant Star, Sept. 13, 1996.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

'Eskimo' Nebula

Hubble takes a look at the "Eskimo" Nebula in this March 6, 2000, image. This stellar relic, first spied by William Herschel in 1787, is nicknamed the "Eskimo" Nebula because, when viewed through ground-based telescopes, it resembles a face surrounded by a fur parka.

NASA/Hulton Archive

NGC 1999

Just weeks after NASA astronauts repaired the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1999, the Hubble Heritage Project snapped this picture of NGC 1999, a nebula in the constellation Orion. The Heritage astronomers, in collaboration with scientists in Texas and Ireland, used Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) to obtain the color image.

NASA/Hulton Archive

Saturn

These Hubble Space Telescope images, captured from 1996 to 2000, show Saturn's rings open up from just past edge-on to nearly fully open as it moves from autumn toward winter in its Northern Hemisphere, part of the course of its 29-year journey around the sun.

NASA/Hulton Archive

Mars

A comparison image of the planet Mars reveals that a global dust storm has engulfed the planet. The storm is comprised of fine dust and obscures all surface features.

NASA/Getty Images

Stingray Nebula

The Stingray Nebula as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope April 2, 1998.

NASA/Hulton Archive

Supernova self-destruction

The self-destruction of supernova 1987-A(C) is shown in this composite image taken in September 1994, February 1996 and July 1997.

NASA/Hubble Heritage Team/AFP

Hubble Space Telescope

This April 6, 1994, image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows stars that lie near the center of our galaxy some 25,000 light-years distant. But one object, the blue curved streak (upper right), is something much closer. An uncatalogued, mile-wide bit of rocky debris orbiting the sun only light-minutes away strayed into the cameras field while the image was being exposed.

NASA/AFP via Getty Images

Moons of Jupiter

This is a Hubble Space Telescope "family portrait" of the four largest moons of Jupiter.

NOL/AFP via Getty Images

Elliptical galaxy

This April 1996 image from Hubble shows the beautiful, eerie silhouette of dark dust clouds against the glowing nucleus of the elliptical galaxy NGC 1316. It may represent the aftermath of a 100 million-year-old cosmic collision between the elliptical and a smaller companion galaxy.

NASA/AFP via Getty Images

Mars

This image released Aug. 27, 2003, shows a close-up of the red planet Mars when it was just 34,648,840 miles away. The color image was assembled from a series of exposures. Many small, dark, circular impact craters can be seen, attesting to the Hubble telescope's ability to reveal fine detail on the planet's surface.

NASA/Getty Images

Hubble Space Telescope

The sun reflects off the newly installed solar panels of the Hubble Space Telescope as it sits in the cargo bay of the space shuttle Endeavour on Dec. 9, 1993.

NASA VIDEO/AFP via Getty Images

Hubble Space Telescope

Jeff Rudolph, president of the California Science Center in Los Angeles, is photographed in front of a Hubble Space Telescope image of part of the Carina Nebula, a place in our galaxy where stars are born, at the California Science Center on Aug. 17, 2012.